The Department of Jurisprudence was founded at Berkeley in 1894. In 1912, the department was renamed the School of Jurisprudence, it was again renamed as the School of Law in 1950.

The School was originally located in the center of the main UC Berkeley campus in the Boalt Memorial Hall of Law, which was built in 1911 with funds largely from Elizabeth Josselyn Boalt donated in memory of her late husband, John Henry Boalt, an attorney who had resided in Oakland, California until his death in 1901. In 1951, the School moved to its current location in the new Boalt Hall, at the southeast corner of the campus, and the old Boalt Hall was renamed Durant Hall.

In April 2008, the law school rebranded itself, through a change of name from "Boalt Hall" to "Berkeley Law", in order to more closely tie the law school's name with the campus upon which it resides. The administration hopes that this move will further increase the law school's prestige, since people will now associate it with the Berkeley campus.[4][5]

Boalt Hall's law library was expanded in 1996 with the North Addition, pictured above.

Boalt Hall has approximately 850 J.D. students, 100 students in the LL.M. and J.S.D. programs, and 45 students in the Ph.D. program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy. The School also features specialized curricular programs in Business, Law and Economics, Comparative Legal Studies, Environmental Law, International Legal Studies, Law and Technology, and Social Justice.

The JD program's admissions process is highly selective. Boalt Hall is known to value high undergraduate GPAs, perhaps even more than high LSAT scores. Consequently, Berkeley has the fourth highest 75th percentile GPA, surpassed only by Yale Law School, Harvard Law School and Stanford Law School. According to U.S. News and World Report, Boalt has the third-lowest acceptance rate among American law schools, with about 10% of applicants admitted; only Yale and Stanford have lower rates. For the class entering in the fall of 2012, 813 out of 7,027 applicants (11.6%) were offered admission, with 263 matriculating. The 25th and 75th LSAT percentiles for the 2012 entering class were 163 and 170, respectively, with a median of 167. The 25th and 75th undergraduate GPA percentiles were 3.68 and 3.91, respectively, with a median of 3.81.[6]

Boalt's grading system for the JD program is unusual among law schools. Students are graded on a High Honors (HH), Honors (H), and Pass (P) scale. Approximately 60% of the students in each class receive a grade of Pass, 30% receive a grade of Honors, and the highest 10% receive a grade of High Honors; lower grades of Substandard Pass (or Pass Conditional, abbreviated PC) and No Credit (NC) may be awarded at the discretion of professors. The top student in each class or section receives the Jurisprudence Award, while the second-place student receives the Prosser Prize.

For a typical class in the JD program, the average age of admitted students is 24 years old, over a range of ages from 20 to 48 years old. Berkeley Law's tuition has increased in recent years. Currently, in-state tuition is 16,155 per year while non-resident tuition is 31,257. This compares with Stanford Law School, which charges $47,460 annually. Most out-state students may claim in-state status in their second-year-study.

The faculty of Berkeley Law also provide academic direction and the bulk of the instruction for the undergraduate program in Legal Studies, which is organized as a major in Letters and Science. The Legal Studies program is not intended as a pre-law program, but rather as a liberal arts program "that can encourage sustained reflection on fundamental values." [7]

Berkeley Law has a chapter of the Order of the Coif, a national law school honorary society founded for the purposes of encouraging legal scholarship and advancing the ethical standards of the legal profession.[8]

According to Brian Leiter's Law School rankings, Boalt ranks 7th in the nation in terms of scholarly impact as measured by academic citations of tenure-stream faculty.[12] In terms of student numerical quality, Boalt ranks 14th in the nation.[13]

According to The Daily Journal, 15 of the top 100 lawyers in California are Boalt alumni. Law and Politics' Super Lawyers magazine ranks Boalt as #9 in the country, just above Yale Law based on the amount of Super Lawyers it produces.[14] 890 alumni are in their list of the top 5% of peer rated attorneys for 2009.

It is listed as "A" (#5) in the January 2011 "Best Public Interest Law Schools" ratings by The National Jurist: The Magazine for Law Students.[15]

In January, 2014 US News and World Report ranked Berkeley ninth in their overall law school rankings of all law schools in the USA.[16] Berkeley is particularly renowned for Environmental Law, including land use, sustainable development, natural resources, energy, and real estate law. US News and World Report ranked Berkeley as the third best law school in the USA for Environmental Law, and it is the only top ten law school to also be in the top ten for Environmental Law. [17] They also ranked the school fifth in the nation for International Law programs,[18] and first in the nation for Intellectual Property Law.[19]

For the graduating class of 2012, 85.9% of graduates were employed in full-time, long-term legal jobs nine months after graduation.[21] According to Boalt Hall's official 2013 ABA-required disclosures, 86.7% of the Class of 2013 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required employment nine months after graduation.[22] Boalt Hall's Law School Transparency under-employment score is 7.6%, indicating the percentage of the Class of 2013 unemployed, pursuing an additional degree, or working in a non-professional, short-term, or part-time job nine months after graduation.[23]

The total cost of attendance (indicating the cost of tuition, fees, and living expenses) at Boalt for the 2013-2014 academic year is $73,933.50 for California residents and $77,884.50 for non-residents.[24] The Law School Transparency estimated debt-financed cost of attendance for three years is $291,462 for residents and $296,910 for non-residents.[25]

Sandy Cohen, a character on the popular television series The O.C., is a lawyer and a Boalt Hall alumnus. "The O.C. at Boalt" is a student group that, in addition to screening episodes of The O.C. during the lunch period, offers the Sandy Cohen Fellowship, a summer grant for students who plan to work as public defenders (on The O.C., Sandy Cohen worked as a public defender while living in Orange County). In recent years, "The O.C. at Boalt" has also managed to bring Peter Gallagher, the actor who plays Sandy Cohen, to Boalt to speak on an annual basis.

Judy Carrier, a major continuing character in Lisa Scottoline's novels about Rosato & Assoc- an all-female law firm in Philadelphia, received her degree froam Boalt Hall and is a very bright legal scholar.

Pete Harrison, played by Bradley Whitford, was the leading role in the hit show "Trophy Wife", and was a Berkeley Law graduate. He dons a Berkeley Law sweatshirt in the first season.